Unnamed anarchist from Europe [interviewer]:Particularly in Canada, the term “First Nations” is frequently used to describe Indigenous societies. This tends to confuse radical Europeans who consider all references to “nations” as necessarily conservative. Can you shed some light on the Indigenous usage of the term?

Taiaike Alfred from the Mohawk Nation of Kahnawá:ke [interviewee]: Europeans should not transpose their experience with nationhood on others. I myself do not think the term accurately describes our people – only our own languages and words can do that – but it is useful in a sense; it conveys an equality of status in theory between our societies and that of the colonizer. And it reiterates the fact of our prior occupancy of this continent (Alfred, 2010).

The languages that we speak build walls. The English language, for instance, is noun-based, territorial and possessive by nature. Behind this language, however, is a distinct way of relating – one that is exemplified by the interview excerpt above. Sharing a language does not imply consensus or commonality. In this case, although Taiake Alfred does not agree in full with the term ‘First Nations’, he does differentiate First Nation and Indigenous Nationhood from European, Westphalia conceptions of nation-state. He dually describes why, from his perspective as a member of the Mohawk Nation from Kahnawá:ke, this terminology resists Eurocentric impositions of governance but also responds to colonial power-imbalances. Social movements, especially in North America, often fall carelessly into colonial traps of Eurocentric thought and colonial universalism, as exampled above[1]. On the surface, though, it is clear why anarchist movements and anarchic theory may be attracted to anti-colonial struggles.

Opposition to the state and to capitalism, to domination and to oppression, are at the core of anarchist and autonomous movements; they are also at the core of anti-colonial struggles that see the state, and by mutual extension the capitalist system, as de-legitimate institutions of authority that ‘Other’ and colonize by way of white supremacist notions of cultural hegemony (see Fanon, 1967; Smith, 2006). Anarchist movements, however, often fail to account for the multiple layers of power that are at play, both contemporarily and historically. As Barker (2012) critically contends, many of the Occupy sites, for example, recolonized by uncritically occupying already occupied lands. The settler privilege of autonomous organizers within these movements upheld hegemonic/colonial territoriality. Romanticized for stewardship and place-based relations to land, Indigenous peoples have even been idolized as the ‘original’ anarchist societies (Barker & Pickerill, 2012). Indigenous Nationhood Movements actively seek to rebuild nation-to-nation relations with settlers by re-empowering Indigenous self-determination and traditional governments (Indigenous Nationhood Movement, 2015). Nation-to-nation, though, cannot be taken in its settler colonial form; indeed, this assumption concerning a homogenous form of government was, and is, at the core of colonialism: “modern government…the European believed, was based upon principles true in every country. Its strengths lay in its universalism” (Mitchell, 2002: 54). Respecting Indigenous Nationhood as a culturally, politically, and spiritually distinct movement propelled by and for Indigenous peoples is integral. Reasons for and tactics in support of these movements may vary, however they inevitably overlap in many offensives with anarchist anti-authoritarian agendas.

With Eurocentric understandings of an anti-colonial anarchism at the core of many activist oriented renditions of such thinking, activists and scholars alike have heeded words of advice to those amidst struggles against colonial forces in settler colonial contexts. As stated by Harsha Walia in discussing autonomy and cross-cultural, colonial-based struggle:

“Non-natives must recognize our own role in perpetuating colonialism within our solidarity efforts. We can actively counter this by… discussing the nuanced issues of solidarity, leadership, strategy and analysis – not in abstraction, but within our real and informed and sustained relationships with Indigenous peoples.” (2012)

By respecting difference, even spatializing autonomy, settler peoples would do well to not transplant – to settle – their perceptions of autonomy, of solidarity, of leadership, and of strategy onto Indigenous movements. Alternatively in settler colonial contexts, anarchist struggles against colonial authority, and thus capitalistic systems, invariably require respectful engagement with Indigenous movements. This is integral if re-colonizing tendencies of anarchist movements–oftentimes primarily driven by European settlers–are to be prevented. Anarchist actors, especially when operating in settler colonial spaces, must understand the nuances of place specific histories and colonial processes. As Lasky suggests, there is “potential for directly relating to each other and changing our relationships with each other in ways that withdraw consent from ‘the system’ and re-creates alternatives that empower our collective personhoods now” (2011: np). As Alfred mentions however, Eurocentric tendencies have oftentimes perpetuated colonial relations of power. As a result, the very structures of oppression that anarchic thought starkly opposes, but also stemmed from, creep into relational geographies.

We offer gratitude to our Iladurrak asabak as well as our Lakota, Anishinabek, Chichimec – Comanche, and Ch’orti’ Maya family who have shared their love, homes, and understanding with us along bizibideak – the path of life. We look to Amalur and the ahaikoak of our european home places and Turtle Island whose freedom and resilience inspire us to carry on…

Openings

As a small family of decolonizing white settlers on the Indigenous lands of Turtle Island, our stories are full of evolving contradictions.

Our direct ancestors were early colonizers of Turtle Island or the Island Hill, known to most by its colonial name of North America. As adventurers, profiteers, or refugees from religious or political persecution, they left europe to join the overlapping waves of settlement that blanketed the Atlantic shoreline in the 1600s. Regardless of their reasons for coming to Turtle Island, our immediate families directly participated in, and continue to profit from, the ethnic cleansing of Atlantic coast and eastern woodland Native peoples including the Haudenosaunee, Lenape, Reuckowacky, Merockes, Matinecock, Massapequas, Quinnipiac, Matinecock, Pequot, Wompanoag, Massachusett, Nottoway, and Powhatan nations, as well as the forced labor of Indigenous Afrikan peoples removed from their homelands.

To reconcile the complex, inter-generational stories that shape who we are, we have committed to movements of decolonization and ancestral recovery. By growing deep togetherness with our ancestors and relatives, we are remembering and revitalizing our common culturous roots from the Indigenous Aquitanian peoples of southern france, survived today in Eskual Herria. We also recognize our diverse heritage from other peoples such as Gaelic Celts, Pictish Scots, and Germanic Suebians. What was dormant in us is renewing itself again.

As a consequence of our commitment to decolonizing movements, we find ourselves an invited part of Indigenous resistance with the Tetuan Lakota Strong Heart Warrior Society known as the Cante Tenza Okolakiciye. We have become family to members of this society. In togetherness with our Strong Heart family, we share the dream of returning wholesome lifeways that reflect the sacredness of creation and allow all beings to thrive in their natural embodiment as relatives enriching the interconnected web of life in a place.

With our own stories in mind and with encouragement from our Strong Heart family to, “hold white people accountable” we would be grateful if the following article can invite real and lasting conversations among white settlers of european heritage regarding the role of resistance within movements of ancestral remembrance and decolonization.

While we believe Indigenous peoples have clearly communicated their needs to decolonizing white settlers, we find a shortage of supporting settler narratives that are strong, thoughtful and originating from direct experience. With these thoughts we hope to share clear, heart-felt, and provocative perspectives that may aid healthy integration of resistance into movements of decolonization by people of european heritage.

While this particular conversation centers settler relationships with Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and Abya Yala (the american continents), we acknowledge the tangled web of settler relationships that include displaced people of Afrikan descent and other Peoples of Color who have been coercively brought inside of the colonial settler-state as a consequence of its militarism, economic desires, and nation building. This is just one decolonizing conversation of many that settlers must face in order to clearly see the consequences of euro-centric colonialism and grow deep understanding that allows collective resistance against colonial assaults on life.

Note: We have included provocative quotes from Native people regarding decolonization and resistance. These quotes are separated out as much as possible from the main body of the article to respect their sovereign voice. Links to the original source have been provided when available (at article end) and readers are encouraged to center these and other Native perspectives in this conversation.

Renewal

For most people of european heritage, decolonization begins as tentative steps towards healing the impacts of colonization within the individual self, rather than collective resistance against colonization undertaken by a family, clan, community, society, tribe, or nation.

These personal movements often originate as efforts to identify ancestors and ancestral places of origin, reconnect in nature, understand the spiritual nature of life, examine one’s white privilege, or create change through activism. There are many reasons for this initial focus on individual experience, but the absence of an indigenous, place-based cultural identity is perhaps the most significant reason why decolonization usually begins as an individual pursuit by people of european heritage.

As a person moves deeper into authentic acts of decolonization, the emphasis on individual movements will be called into question. These questions will rise internally as one grapples with a growing awareness of being deeply interconnected with other life. These questions will also arise externally from Indigenous people and their allies who are wary of euro-centric acts of “self-improvement” that do not actually challenge the colonial mindset and its destructive behaviors inflicted upon Indigenous life.

“Decolonization is the intelligent & active resistance to the forces & the impacts of colonization & it’s working towards liberation of indigenous peoples…. So if you are not actively working toward the liberation of indigenous people, as indigenous people or as settler people, then you’re not doing decolonizing work.”

Waziyatawin – Pezihutazizi Otunwe Dakota

Authentic decolonization will so profoundly provoke an awakening understanding of who you are and where you come from that it radically transforms one’s relationship to self, people, place, and all life. The renewal and rebalancing of these relationships breaks the greedy cycle of disassociation, desperation, and destruction that fuels the colonial disorder within an individual.

When this renewal of relationships is presently active within groups of related people, then decolonization can grow into collective actions to resist and dismantle colonialism at multiple levels in order to return Indigenous lands and lifeway. This is the realization that fully healing one’s inner relationships of self is impossible without renewing relationships of love and togetherness with other peoples and life forms.

Remembrance

Authentic acts of decolonization provoke unsettling questions that go to the heart of white and settler privilege, and confront settlers with our uncertain futures on the stolen Indigenous lands we inhabit. As we feel the anxiety of surrendering our privilege, it is tempting to look for ways to preserve our comforts. Concepts that look similar to decolonization become more attractive even though they may not create fundamental change to our relationships with life. These diversions are traps that simply insert us back into colonial systems of privilege, consumption, and denial.

“So let’s toss out a different kind of ‘progression’ to all you…liberals and occupiers out there. You join us in liberating our land and lives. Lose the privilege you acquire at our expense by occupying our land. Make that your first priority for as long as it takes to make it happen…but if you’re not willing to do that then don’t presume to tell us how we should go about our own liberation, what priorities and values we should have. Since you’re standing on our land, we’ve got to view you as another oppressor trying to hang onto what’s ours.”

Yet-Si-Blue (Janet McCloud) – Coast Salish Tulalip

The simple truth is: we cannot avoid facing our uneasy and unsettled relationships to the Indigenous peoples and Indigenous lands that we occupy. If we do not relinquish our settler privilege and grow healthier relationships with Indigenous peoples, life, and lands on their terms, then we will only be skimming across the surface of decolonizing movements, creating the appearance of transformative change, but actually cementing our occupation and theft of Indigenous lands and cultures even more firmly into the continent’s already bloodied ground.

Turtle Island is beautiful but bloodied land, under siege since 1492 and still in active resistance to euro-centric colonization and settlement. She continues to yield the bounty of riches we live on today, derived from the continued thieving and pillaging of Indigenous life forms. And she is ever the storyteller of the genocide begun by our ancestors.

While settlers claim to love this beautiful land – without the vital presence and consent of its Indigenous human peoples, such love is racist and self-serving. If one is going to truly love the land, then that love will embody Indigenous peoples thriving on that land as an integral and inseparable aspect of the cultural and ecological landscape.

But too often, our so-called love is the possessive adoration of “wilderness” and natural places violently emptied of Indigenous peoples through ethnic cleansing. We embrace the racist fabrication of “pristine” nature – the erasure of the natural Indigenous human being from the land we claim to love. We’re content with this human aspect of the land being invisible, relegated to the nostalgic past, being oppressed, being destroyed. Our love reveals itself as selfish and insecure.

Because of this insecurity, it is very difficult for us to accept Native peoples as presently alive and inseparable from the land itself, let alone surrender our entitled claims of presence and authority that would further their natural reintegration into their home places and relationships of freedom.

In making Indigenous human people invisible, we reveal our fear of displacement, denial of shame, and the ignorance of our own stories from a time when we were peoples integral to places. For our grotesque convenience, we disavow our continuing role in ongoing genocidal warfare.

Only through the most dissociative forms of forgetting, can we innocently turn to the beautiful land for solace, pleasure, and connection without feeling some sense of unease. Otherwise, we would feel compelled to take conscious action to reconcile these feelings. But conscious actions upset our bliss. This makes us deeply invested to only see the land we want to see. We do not see what is really there.

The land has many more stories to tell than just the beautiful ones that indulge our innocent pleasure. If we only look around and listen with an open heart, we will see past our short-term love affair with a continent that doesn’t belong to us, and consider all of the stories that may live in the mountains, waters, and wind.

Mountains, timeless and unforgetting. Their slow presence draws our thoughtful gaze, asking us to consider all they have seen over the course of their lives.

Elder peaks, they remember our people’s first unfamiliar steps on the land, and the atrocities that followed – just a moment ago in their lifetime.

Weathered heights beckon our hearts to consider a time before we arrived on these shores, when our love was given to the elder mountains in our own places.

To recognize all that the mountains remember is to feel the gaping loss for all that we have forgotten. Perhaps that is why we are so intent to gore their insides out with machinery and dynamite their faces into dust.

Flowing waters remind us too. They whisper and roar in languages unknown to us, because our own languages were not born here.

Our ears strain to translate the ancient songs sung by trickling streams and falling rapids, but we can’t hear past the groaning dam of our own obstructed spirits.

So we seek something tangible to grasp, a token to hold.

Never realizing when we take the mottled clamshell from the river’s edge, we hold a shell grown with calcium bleeding from the bones of the land’s Indigenous peoples.

In our hand we hold the love of a people who died fighting to remain free – from us.

Even the wind carries ghostly songs from seasons before.

Breath of the dead forever tousling our hair or biting cold our skin in mourning of the forced snowy marches and wintertime massacres.

Bare tree branches shiver in the brisk winter wind, like the elders and children who died exposed and shaking in the ice and snow at the hands of our own family members just two or three generations ago.

Grandmother wind, who once joyfully canted and wallowed with sixty million bison across this continent, now wails by concrete highways and factory farms with the lonely cries of slaughter for our ears.

For the settler, this kind of seeing is hard, and the questions it provokes are unsettling. Because these questions create uncertain futures for us on this land, we often unconsciously create ways to preserve colonial privileges and comforts. We twist our actions into something that has the look of radical transformation, but without the deeply profound changes to our ways of being and relating.

This is why so-called settler “back to the land” and “sustainability” projects like rewilding, homesteading, occupying the commons, new culture, eco-villages, and intentional communities are most often misguided attempts at reclaiming our lost innocence with the land. These projects typically use humanistic, non-violent language that conceals the further dispossession, domestication, and genocide of Indigenous life. And then when Indigenous objections to these acts of resettlement come, they are conveniently evaded with socially conscious labels like “liberating,” “sustainable,” and “organic”. This privileged cycle of willfully ignorant destruction followed by evasion of responsibility has been going on for centuries. Our excuses have changed but the assault on Indigenous life remains.

“If these people [intentional community] want to do the exact same thing every other supposed “conscious minded, sympathetic, good hearted” colonist and colonial descendent have done and continue to do…If they want to practice group escapism from a society, country, and environment that they themselves have created and continue to aid, abet, and habituate, while monetarily sustaining themselves off of the enslavement, disruption, rape and monetization of an entire once natural ecology, then that is their prerogative. But I only ask they be honest with themselves as they do this, this is not too much to ask.”

Pohebits Quasho – Chichimec/Comanche

Our past is inescapable, because it is alive in the present whether we acknowledge it or not. To question our present-day role in these ongoing atrocities – to see both the beauty and the blood is unsettling. But the land and her peoples remember and resist, and so must we.

Resistance

Authentic movements of decolonization involve healing and transforming relationships at their core. They will inevitably bring us to deeply considering, understanding, changing, and transforming relationships with ourselves, as well as our relationships to the stolen Indigenous lands we derive a nonconsensual existence from and the First Peoples of this place who, despite our most strident efforts at dispossession and removal, are inseparable from the land itself.

Considering the millennia of sacred, spiritual interdependence between Indigenous peoples and their home places, we must embody the realization that honest relationship with Indigenous people is the only way to find wholeness, balance and freedom on these lands. We cannot bypass them to create our own settler ideals, violently disrupting ancient relationship, and then say we are engaged in genuine movements of healing with the land.

“If you’re not aware of your location in relation to the indigenous peoples liberation struggles of whose lands you’re on then any liberation that you’re fighting for is still gonna be colonization. We have to come to terms with that and understand that. That’s the first step to be able to articulate this.”

Klee Benally – Black Mesa Navajo

While relationships with the land’s Indigenous peoples may take many forms, one fact is unavoidable: all Indigenous peoples are under fire from colonial forces, and those that have not been neutralized are engaged in some kind of urgent resistance to these forces. Because of this, there is no way that settlers can create deep and meaningful relationships with Indigenous peoples without becoming a part of that resistance in some form. What these forms look like will likely depend on one’s gifts, privileges, and the needs of Indigenous peoples one is relating with. Regardless of the form, acts of resistance cannot be avoided and should be considered a part of an authentic and honorable path back to healing one’s balanced relationships with life.

If we are truly working to create more balanced relationships with life, then we will turn away from superficial acts of individual self-improvement and consciousness raising that leaves the self-serving ego of colonialism intact. Instead, we will find the courage necessary to recover the innate gifts and roles of our own spirit so we may honor our clan, tribe, or nation as well as all life in both our ancestral homes and on the Indigenous lands we occupy now.

We of european descent, as all peoples, originally come from beautiful peoples, alive places and sacred lifeways of love, togetherness, and vibrant creation. This is who we are. Each step we take in the remembrance of this understanding nourishes our spirits and restores our natural function. We often forget this or see these lifeways as “lost”. They are not lost. They are held in the Earth, and with other living beings who still live in freedom. The knowledge and love in our original lifeways lives on deep within our selves, and awakens in relationship with these beings, including our ancestors and unseen beings. These place-based cultures call to us to be seen, held, and embodied in us, to be present in our moments of new creation in our modern relationships. They are a web stretching through past, through story, through the Earth, through our hearts, and through the future generations to come. They are a possibility of deep healing, of life-enriching movement, and of wholesome freedom. This is possible.

While recovering these lifeways may sound quite exciting, let us remember all places, and the life within, face immediate and ongoing colonial control, domestication, and enforcement. There is no safe refuge we can hide in. The colonial capitalist project marches on intent on domesticating, controlling, commodifiying, and destroying all life in its path. Decolonizing settlers on Indigenous lands have no honorable choice but resistance with Indigenous peoples.

Even if we choose to return to our ancestral lands across the ocean, there are few scenarios that allow for us to avoid acts of resistance.

The Basque, Sami, Sorbians, and many other Indigenous and ethnic minorities in europe are facing their own forms of colonization. Language is constantly under threat of assimilation, and culture is being homogenized and commodified by neo-liberal capitalism, modernism, and the European Union project. Resistance is a fact of life here as well.

If we don’t consciously and actively define who and what we are, the world will define who we are for us – using all of its distorted projections and colonial value systems to keep us domesticated and impotent. Without resistance, colonialism will continue to steal the real lives, identities, gifts, roles, and cultural lifeways of Indigenous peoples, as well as the Indigenous spirit that still lives inside of us. To bring this spirit out of dormancy, we must be prepared to do whatever is asked of us by our ancestors and the land itself to create the conditions that allow for our original languages and cultures to revitalize and reawaken in the present day and for future generations.

Finally, colonialism and capitalism have created the space for a host of unhealthy relationship dynamics to exist between settlers and Indigenous people. Cultural appropriation, spiritual materialism, and fantasized “adoptions” complete with an Indian name!! are just a few examples of unhealthy relationships settlers create with Native people.

Because colonialism can be expressed in inverted ways, we benefit by being cautious of relationships with Indigenous people (or those claiming to be) that allow us to evade our roles and participation in authentic resistance movements. These relationships may develop within colonial settings or even on the reservation itself.

Relationships with Native people that derive from white settler spiritual seeking, “oneness” events, or white guilt should be considered critically if they do not stress our authentic resistance to the colonial forces affecting Indigenous lands and peoples. If money, sex, or image boosting (ex. I’m a healer, shaman, more spiritual, etc.) is used to commodify this relationship, then most certainly one is involved in an unhealthy act. We cannot afford to perpetuate these kinds of relationships.

“What we are trying to tell you America, and you American people, is to get your head out of your ass and really look at what you are doing… How does the white man replace my eastern people that once lived in paradise along that eastern shoreline. They’re gone. Their language is gone. They don’t exist any more. What did you do with them?”

Canupa Gluha Mani – Tetuwan Oglala Lakota

We also benefit by looking critically at why and how we provide activist solidarity to Indigenous peoples and movements – being clear about what motivates us to be a “good ally.” Is it ego that motivates us? White guilt? Hoping Native wisdom will help us fill an empty feeling? Let’s consider what it will take for us to transform shallow motivation into intelligent, deeply understood acts of resistance that have significance for the wholeness and balance of all life. Let’s accept the responsibility to understand what our actions are creating in the world around us!

It’s worth noting that activism or aid given in relationship to Bureau of Indian Affairs Tribal Governments i.e. collaborators and dependents of the U.S. Government, is often used to further marginalize the poor, traditional, and grassroots people in favor of non-traditional holders of power within a reservation. This is also true of certain organizations and non-profits. It is our responsibility to understand the nature of our relationships and their consequences on others. Superficial relationships do not allow for this level of cultural competency.

Deep movements of decolonization allow for the self-knowledge and cultural competency to begin to discern more healthy relationships from those that perpetuate unhealthy and exploitative power dynamics created by colonialism. Knowing our own hearts and stories, as well as learning our own Indigenous language and reawakening our cultural lifeway in relationship to place creates the possibility of relating with Indigenous peoples in different ways than simply being a culturally ignorant settler on stolen land allows.

When we remember our ancestral ways of being and the place-based protocols of respect that grow and nurture healthier relationships with life, we regain the self-respect, deep love, and desire to be in honorable relationship with other beings. We can genuinely embody who we were meant to be as culturous peoples in a place, moving past white guilt, forgetfulness, and shame into radical acts of transformation that allow us to honor the gift of creating relations with other Indigenous peoples and life forms – including strong, loving acts of togetherness and resistance.

It may be a long, challenging path to grow these relationships. We have a lot of listening, self-reflecting, and trust building to do. But the conversations and new possibilities this path brings are vibrantly alive, deeply transformative, and create an intergenerational movement towards wholeness. This is our sacred responsibility.

On February 9, members of the National Freedom Movement gathered on the lawns at Parliament House in Canberra to present the Australian minister for Indigenous affairs, Nigel Scullion, with the Aboriginal Sovereign Manifesto of Demands. This document calls for negotiations between the Commonwealth government and Indigenous nations across the country to set out a framework for what’s known as “decolonization.”

The National Freedom Movement was born out of the Freedom Summit that took place in Alice Springs last November. The summit saw a delegation of Aboriginal leaders from around the nation meeting to declare the independence of Australia’s First Peoples and address the growing disparities they face. These include increasing levels of incarceration and suicide, the continuing forced removals of children from their families, and the Western Australian government’s intentions to close down up to 150 remote Indigenous communities.

On January 26, the delegates along with 500 supporters converged on Old Parliament House in Canberra to stage a sit-in, protesting the occupation of their land for the last 227 years. When they returned on the day federal parliament reopened to present the manifesto, politicians from both sides of government met with the leaders to discuss their grievances.

The National Freedom Movement is not alone in demanding decolonization. Other Indigenous movements, such as the youth group Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, are also calling for an end to the colonization of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Based on this, the manifesto calls for the Commonwealth of Australia to undertake a series of treaties with all Indigenous nations—a process that would require Australia to become an independent federated republic. These nations would then become self-governing territories within the republic. And a new constitution would be drafted, which would incorporate Aboriginal law as part of the legal system.

An Aboriginal passport. Image courtesy of the Warriors of Aboriginal Resistance

“Decolonization is about giving the people the freedom to exercise their right of self-determination. It’s about taking ownership of our issues and affairs and developing an economic base that we control and own,” Ghillar Michael Anderson, leader of the Euahlayi people, said. “In this country Aboriginal people are not allowed to control our own economics because governments have ownership over everything.”

Anderson, a co-founder of the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, wrote the manifesto. He believes that the new constitution would put Aboriginal people in a position to start asserting their self-determination, but this can’t happen if the government keeps “destroying our population.”

“Out in the bush, you see hundreds of people dying. We’re losing a generation in the group between 12 and 18, because of drug use, as well as hopelessness and despair. The suicide rate is endemic in this country right now amongst Aboriginal kids,” Anderson said. “We’re saying that the government is killing our people.”

Included in the manifesto are demands for a share of all revenue raised from the exploitation of natural resources, a moratorium on the removal of Aboriginal children from their families, and reinstating classes taught in the original language of each nation.

These demands have been made by members the older generation. But are the voices of Indigenous youth movements fighting for the same thing? According to Meriki Onus, a representative of the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance, they are chasing the same ideals, just somewhat differently. She supports the call for negotiated treaties and the establishment of autonomous Indigenous nations. But she ultimately sees this as based on the colonizer’s laws and questions how this would affect people on an individual level.

“I think it’s deeper than political,” she said. “In a practical sense we need to go back to a time when things really did work for us. We need Aboriginal self-determination. Our freedom will never be found within the Australian legal system.”

Decolonization can be undertaken on a personal level through everyday acts, Onus explained. She lists such ways as being conscious of diet and the clothes that are worn, as well as an awareness of where money is spent and what it’s contributing to. She believes an important part of the decolonization process is not exposing oneself to corporate media.

“And also reviving your language, going back to country, learning your creation stories and forming a relationship with your people,” she added.

Onus, a Gunnai and Gunditjmara woman, travelled to Canada last year to visit local Indigenous communities. She warned that although treaties have been established there, these communities are still facing high suicide and imprisonment rates.

Controversy marked her return to Australia when the group she travelled with re-entered the country using Aboriginal passports instead of Australian ones, an act Onus sees as “liberating our lives from colonial control.”

For Terry Mason, senior lecturer at the Badanami Centre at the University of Western Sydney, decolonization is linked to the concepts of sovereignty and treaty. He envisages an Australia where there are multiple treaties which allow “Aboriginal people to be able to respond in a modern world in a way that reflects their cultural and social continuum.” Treaties would reflect the circumstances of different nations. Those in the outback may be able to get their land and resources back, while those on the coast may not.

Mason, an Awabakal man, said decolonization relies on self-determination, which allows people to have the ability to imagine their own future. But in Australia there’s been an internal colonization of sorts. “If you’ve had five generations of Aboriginal people with all their decision-making rights over their lives removed, then people don’t grow up with the concept of imagining futures,” he said.

He also points out that Australia moved toward greater colonization with the Mabo decision and the establishment of native title. As land use under native title is co-managed with government bodies, Aboriginal rights are often subsumed by other stakeholders.

“In ’88, we weren’t walking down the street saying ‘native title now.’ We were marching down the street saying ‘we want land rights now,'” Mason said, highlighting that land rights result in actual Aboriginal control of the land and its resources, rather than just nominal ownership. “Land rights carry with them your spiritual, your cultural, your social links but also an economic base.”

Shortly after the October 12th elections last year which granted President Evo Morales a third term in office with over 60 percent of the vote, I visited the government’s Vice Ministry of Decolonization. The Vice Ministry is first of its kind and a center for the administration’s efforts to recover Bolivia from what is seen by much of the country’s indigenous majority as 500 years of colonialism, imperialism and capitalism since the arrival of the Spanish.

The walls of the Vice Ministry’s offices were decorated with portraits of indigenous rebels Túpac Katari and Bartolina Sisa who fought against the colonial Spanish in 1781. I sat down to talk with Elisa Vega Sillo, the current Director of the Depatriarchalization Unit in the Vice Ministry of Decolonization, a former leader in the Bartolina Sisa indigenous campesina women’s movement, and a member of the Kallawaya indigenous nation. In the interview. Elisa spoke about the unique work of the Vice Ministry of Decolonization, the role of historical memory in the country’s radical politics, and the importance of decolonizing Bolivia’s history of indigenous resistance.

Ben Dangl: Could you please describe the type of work you do here in the Vice Ministry of decolonization?

Elisa Vega: We develop public policies against racism, against discrimination toward people with different abilities, the elderly, indigenous people. We also work on issues related to machismo and patriarchy. These are things we discuss and work on with young people, to help them question and raise awareness about these issues, because no one is questioning them… Another part of our work involves the issue of decolonization and the recuperation of our [indigenous] knowledge and skills.

BD: What does decolonization mean politically and in everyday life to you?

EV: Decolonization means a lot to me, it means recuperating… our own path, something which we’ve been forced to lose, this [indigenous] path, this wisdom, this knowledge has been devalued, minimized as though it weren’t knowledge at all. And so now we are recuperated this, and we’re doing so in our own way. This for us is decolonization, a process which is done via the state but also via the social organizations, because this is an issue of how to organize, how to speak of our ancestral technologies. Yes, many things have been modernized, but in many cases we have a necessity to recuperate our own principles and values as indigenous peoples.

BD: Could you speak of the role of historical memory and how, as a Vice Ministry, you rescue pre-colonial history and knowledge, as well as myths and stories?

EV: For the indigenous people this continues to be a part of our everyday lives. […] In our organizations, we speak a lot about colonialism, neoliberalism, imperialism. And we realized that it’s not [foreigners] that are oppressing the indigenous peoples, but now it’s a system that has been constructed, and we have accommodated this system. […] So we have to look behind us, but also ahead and ask ourselves ‘who are we and where do we want to go?’ These are the questions we raise in order to recuperate our identity.

BD: Could you speak of the legacy and the history of Bartolina Sisa and Túpac Katari in this context, in terms of the work you do here in the Vice Ministry?

EV: [T]his is something we work on and look at each day. Our questions have to be: Why were they sacrificed? Why were they struggling and what was it like? For us, you could say that Túpac Katari is like our grandmother, our mother. And it is the same with many of our past leaders – they are a part of our process of struggle.

BD: How do you rescue an anti-colonial vision from history? How do you gain lessons, for example, from the histories of Katari and Sisa?

EV: We try and recover an anti-colonial vision above all, because the [official] history that’s been recovered of Bartolina, of Túpac Katari was this: that the rebel indians were so bad, they laid siege to the…poor Spanish…the Indians are savage animals – this was the history they told us. But in reality [the indigenous people] rebelled to get rid of oppression, the slavery in the haciendas, the taking over of land, of our wealth in Cerro Rico in Potosi, our trees, our knowledge – they rebelled against all of this. But in the official history, the colonial history, they tell us that the bad ones were the indigenous people, and they deserved what they got. So we recuperate our own history, a history of how we were in constant rebellion and how they were never able to subdue us.

For radicals, part of taking our struggle seriously is committing to understanding ourselves, the context we’re operating within, and the perspectives of our enemies. Time Bomb is a good example of an enemy text which can prove useful to us. The author, Douglas Bland, spent thirty years in threat assessment with the Canadian Armed Forces. Time Bomb is his second book, essentially a long essay that broadly discusses the Canada-First Nations relationship, examines the possibility of an indigenous insurgency, and proposes a counter-insurgency strategy to preventatively ‘disarm’ the time bomb.

The most interesting section of this book is Bland’s study of so-called feasibility theory that seeks to explain the origins of contemporary insurgencies. Proponents of feasibility theory are less interested in what motivates insurgents and instead how feasible an insurgency is in a given context. They argue that if conditions exist that make an insurgency feasible and they aren’t ‘corrected,’ an insurgency will inevitably occur. The prevention and/or suppression of insurgencies is achieved not by resolving grievances but by shifting the conditions that make insurgency feasible in the first place.

Feasibility theorists did a statistical analysis of civil conflicts and came up with five major determinants that significantly increase the risk of an insurgency:

1) A society divided by ethnic or religious cleavages;
2) A high proportion of men aged 15-29;
3) A more mountainous, and less flat, terrain;
4) A weak security apparatus; and
5) An economy heavily dependent on exporting natural resources.

Bland applies these determinants to the Canadian situation and finds that overall, Canada is at risk:

1) Indigenous people are sharply separated from Canadian society, especially on reserves.
2) There is a very high proportion of young men in the population.1
3) Canada has both mountainous and flat terrain, but is vulnerable because of its enormous territory.
4) While Canadian security forces are effective at containing ‘localized incidents’ they simply can’t defend hundreds of kilometres of transportation and energy infrastructure.
5) The Canadian economy is largely dependent on natural resource export, which relies on this same infrastructure to get to market.

Bland follows his feasibility study with a thought experiment: what would an indigenous rebellion that managed to successfully threaten Canada actually look like? Assuming that the overall strategic objective would be for First Nations to become recognized as fully sovereign entities within Canada, and noting the growing frustration activists are expressing at Idle No More’s inability to force the federal government to meaningfully change course, he argues that a strategic shift is already happening within grassroots indigenous movements away from convincing the Canadian public and towards threatening the economy. Bland fears that a strategy of gradually escalating disruptions to railway and highway bottlenecks across the country, if coordinated and prolonged, could directly threaten the economy:

Continual widespread and unpredictable minor disruptions … could be effective without the use of sophisticated skills and guns and explosives simply because the foundation of the economy is vulnerable to very simple techniques of interference – burning cars on railway tracks would suffice.

In the final chapters of Time Bomb, Bland proposes a sophisticated counter-insurgency strategy for the federal government that reads like a neocolonial playbook. First, he argues for a number of political solutions: building stronger alliances with moderate Native leaders, integrating Native communities into the resource economy through profit-sharing and preferential hiring programs, education and training programs targeted towards the 15-24 year old ‘warrior cohort’ on reserves, and increased funding for on-reserve police forces. This is coupled with a number of repressive tactics, including disrupting illegal indigenous organizations,2 encouraging migration from reserves into cities, withholding government funding for reserves that refuse to marginalize radical leaders, and quietly threatening potential insurgents.

For those of us who want to see Canada decolonized, what lessons can be drawn from Time Bomb? Obviously it would be a mistake to take all of Bland’s warnings at face value, as his career directly benefits from fear-mongering. I’m inclined to agree with his acknowledgment that presently, a level of coordination simply doesn’t exist across the country to actually threaten the economy. Most disruption until now has been relatively localized, and when it has spread it has been through more spontaneous expressions of solidarity, such as the #ShutDownCanada response to the police attack in Elsipogtog, or the Idle No More Days of Action.

Still, I find his assessment of Canada’s vulnerabilities compelling. His paranoid thought experiment does offer an interesting toolbox of tactics for economic disruption by relatively small groups of people. If we can identify economic bottlenecks close to where we live, build our capacity to target those bottlenecks, and prioritize well-timed actions when the calls for solidarity go out, we can affirm our power and put Canada’s vulnerability on display. If these acts are effective they would inspire others to join us or take action themselves; if that momentum continues to grow we really could find ourselves in a situation where we pose a threat equal to the fears of Douglas Bland. Of course, such a path would mean escalating repressive consequences, coupled with efforts to delegitimize and isolate our movements. We need to consider those consequences and be prepared to minimize, avoid or counter them. Those of us who desire a life free from Canadian control should develop visions of how that life might look in the areas we live now, and build the skills, relationships and autonomous communities today that could help shape a decolonized future tomorrow.

Watersheds and Indigenous Peoples know no borders. Canada’s watershed management affects America’s watersheds, and vice versa. As Canada Prime Minister Stephen Harper launches significant First Nations termination contrivance he negotiates legitimizing Canada’s settler colonialism under the guise of “progress.” Progress, through Harper’s political illusion, provides inadequate allocation of money for water and wastewater systems on Canada’s reservations. Almost every natural resource development currently operating or planned is within 200 kilometers of a First Nation community and on its traditional lands. Harper has laid off public natural resource managers and environmental protection personnel and has weakened policies for conservation, again in the name of progress. Idle No More is about many things, but first and foremost it represents a unified effort to protect Mother Earth. We will talk about the evidence of watershed degradation due to American progress too…. But first let’s talk about watersheds.

Watersheds in New York state are in close proximity to the border of Canada and thus to Canadian watersheds. Silencing Canadian indigenous people over water, carries with it a risk to Americans’ and indigenous Americans’ watersheds.

By silencing traditional ecological knowledge, the “progress” settler colonial ethic has wreaked havoc on watershed ecosystems. This ecosystem degradation comes from point and non-point pollution, industrial agriculture and domesticated meat production. Water quality issues also come from road runoff, lawn care products, sewers, chemicals and poor logging practices, all of which result in a declension of our drinking water and ground water and the vitiation of ecosystems.

When Native Americans are not allowed to discuss public land management as stakeholders, connectivity to reservation ecosystems is at risk. Discussions about U.S. public lands juxtaposed onto New York private lands and Indian reservations become imperative. This is important in order to understand ecosystem connectivity. Toxic degraded ecosystems on public lands adjacent to indigenous lands places ecosystems on indigenous lands at risk, especially with climate change upon us.

Native American thought, sovereignty and sustainability is steeped in traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). In order to understand the complexities of collaboration between TEK and western science, it is important to recognize the comparisons between the western science version of TEK (owning Native American thought) and indigenous versions of TEK.

Even though western science ecologists are coming around to embrace TEK, there is a long history of western science’s silencing the voices of traditional ecological knowledge practitioners. Many scientists cite credibility and legitimacy concerns over oral history. Indigenous people might give other reasons, such as the commodification of indigenous sovereign natural resources, land dispossession and industrial influences, which understandably engender a great deal of distrust from indigenous nations. Consequently, western science has excluded opportunities to collaborate with indigenous TEK practitioners. Collaboration between indigenous TEK and western science in watershed ecosystem restoration, monitoring and management can only contribute to successful sustainable and hearty watershed ecosystems for natural resource and food security.

]]>https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2015/02/06/idle-no-more-decolonizing-water-food-and-natural-resources-with-traditional-ecological-knowledge/feed/1unsettlingcolorado Rosalyn LaPier/VimeoUnder Construction: Decolonized Queer Masculinity(ies)https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/under-construction-decolonized-queer-masculinityies/
https://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/under-construction-decolonized-queer-masculinityies/#commentsThu, 29 Jan 2015 02:23:05 +0000http://unsettlingamerica.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/under-construction-decolonized-queer-masculinityies/Decolonize ALL The Things:This is something that I have been discussing with close friends and working on what this means for myself. As somebody who is considered an academic in some sense, a lot of figuring…]]>

This is something that I have been discussing with close friends and working on what this means for myself. As somebody who is considered an academic in some sense, a lot of figuring this out means I’ve been reading loads of research articles, books, and articles online to look at loads of different perspectives and see how that looks next to the many conversations that I have had with close friends and family. The academic portion of this journey has proved to be difficult as a consequence of the white history of the term “queer” and the lack of theorization of queer masculinity for Black women that is not solely described as one for Black lesbians. As a Black person whose gender identity is queer masculine, I have been wrestling with what this means to me and working on constructing a queer masculinity that is decolonized. And by that I…

The Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR) are pleased to announce that we will be launching our new national publication Black Nations Rising (BNR) in January 2015. We will publish independently, receiving no government or corporate funding. Our first edition will have a print run of 5000 copies thanks to the support of several trade unions.

The quarterly magazine will seek to inform Aboriginal people about decolonization and inspire them to take action in the anticolonial struggle. We will promote symbols, stories and strategies of resistance and revival. All content published in BNR will be consistent with WAR’s philosophy of Aboriginal nationalism.

We hope BNR follows in the footsteps of revolutionary print media initiatives like The Black Panther Intercommunal News Service (newspaper of Black Power movement in USA 1967-1980), Warrior Publications (manuals for Indigenous liberation 2006-current) and Black Nation (broadsheet of 1980s Aboriginal land rights movement).

Because WAR believes independent Aboriginal media to be an essential services in terms of pushing for social and political change, there will be no subscription cost for Aboriginal people. The ‘pay the rent’ subscription fee for non-Aboriginal people will be $50 per year, or $15 per copy. The magazine will be distributed via Aboriginal organizations and handed out at Aboriginal events (e.g. Invasion Day rallies, NAIDOC celebrations, football carnivals). Our volunteer staff consists of co-editors Pekeri Ruska (Goenpul/Yuggera) and Callum Clayton-Dixon (Nganyaywana), printing/distribution manager Merinda Meredith (Darambul), and artist Jade Slockee (Gumbaynggirr).

BNR is built upon the foundations laid down by Brisbane Blacks magazine (August 2013 – October 2014). Six issues of Brisbane Blacks magazine were published with over 6000 copies printed and distributed, with 120 pages of content produced. Like Brisbane Blacks magazine, copies of BNR will also be distributed to 200+ Aboriginal families in southeast Queensland via the Brisbane Aboriginal Sovereign Embassy Community Food Program. BNR issue one is slated for release (print and online) on January 19.

Criminal lawyer Pekeri Ruska says BNR will be the most powerful independent Aboriginal publication this country will see. “The information we collate and share will aid in the liberation of our people. We will reignite their strength and conscience to decolonize from the realms of colonial oppression.”

Founder of Brisbane Blacks magazine Callum Clayton-Dixon believes the Aboriginal movement and Aboriginal media should be one and the same. “A new era of Aboriginal activism dawns, and with it comes the need for strong independent Aboriginal media to echo the calls of Aboriginal nationalism and decolonization. Black Nations Rising will carry forward our agenda for change.”

This excess is carried in and on the bodies of Black peoples, it is embodied and illegible to the state, unable to be incorporated into Whiteness, and is thus always present before, beyond and against the state. Blackness as excess is, as Alex Weheliye explains, a fleshy excess. It spills over and protrudes; it cannot be contained. It is always escaping. It is always already too much.

In each of three most recent cases of Black death to garner mass mainstream media attention – the deaths of Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice – the bodily excess of the victims was used as…